Claude Code in Production: Hooks, MCP Servers, Plugins & Custom Skills
In previous posts, we’ve covered how the tool-calling loop works, what a production-grade system prompt looks like, and how MCP connects agents to business systems. Those posts describe the architecture of any AI agent. This one narrows the focus to a specific one: Claude Code.
Out of the box, Claude Code is a capable general-purpose coding agent. It reads your files, edits your code, runs your tests, and commits your changes. But it doesn’t know your team’s conventions. It doesn’t know that src/api/ files need input validation, or that every PR needs a changelog entry, or that it should never touch package-lock.json. It doesn’t have access to your Postgres staging database or your Sentry error feed.